The invention relates to an apparatus for coiling and storing a flexible material of substantial length such as a wire rope having sufficient stiffness to withstand a reasonable degree of axial compression.
One application of such an apparatus is found in a structure sometimes called a gondola, for construction and cleaning purposes, which is suspended from the attic so as to be elevatable along the external wall of a building. In this application, a wire rope is utilized for suspension and pulled by a friction hauling machine to move the gondola up and down. Desirably a length of the rope which is hauled in is coiled in order to facilitate its uncoiling. U.S. Pat. No. 3,224,470 issued Dec. 21, 1965 to C. H. Arnold discloses an apparatus for coiling and uncoiling a wire rope, which comprises a base having a central post fixedly mounted thereon, and a rotatable container which defines an annular space around the post for receiving a wire rope. As a wire rope is fed into the container through guide means, the rope causes the container to rotate in one direction while the rope itself is coiled into the container. The container has an open top, which is opposed by a cover plate secured to the central post with a small clearance therebetween. The guide means mentioned above includes a conduit extending athwart and secured to the cover plate. The conduit functions to feed the wire rope into the container in a direction tangential to the receiving space while spacing to run athwart relative to the bottom of the container.
However, the described apparatus suffers from several disadvantages. A major difficulty is the fact that as the wire rope is coiled along the sidewall of the container and eventually reaches the top end of the sidewall, it comes into contact with the cover plate secured to the central post, thereby interfering with a smooth rotation of the container by friction. This results in an axial movement of the wire rope being resisted to cause a slack therein before the rope reaches the conduit. The slack tends to increase rapidly as a result of the gravity of the rope, preventing the conduit from fanctioning as a guide means. Another difficulty of the apparatus resides in the outward projection of the conduit from the cover plate, which prevents a stacking of the apparatus during shipment or storage.